Scheduling a workforce for various business activities is a complex process that typically involves a large number of variables to consider in generating schedules such as, for example, volume of activities to be performed, available staff, and skills of various staff members with respect to performing these activities. Thus, many industries make use of some type of scheduling system to assist in generating and maintaining schedules for their workforces. In addition, in generating such schedules, scheduling systems may make use of forecasting techniques to better predict scheduling variables based on historical data for such variables.
However, a problem that can often occur is workforce needs (e.g., staffing requirements) may change during the course of business activities being conducted and these changes may result in labor shortages because the current work schedule becomes obsolete. For example, a particular organization may be providing cleaning services and several clients may suddenly request additional cleaning services for unforeseen reasons by the organization. Thus, the particular organization may not have enough of its workforce scheduled to staff the increased demand for its cleaning services. Furthermore, the organization may not have the mechanisms in place to quickly recognize this increased demand from several clients in a timely fashion and to adequately adjust the schedule by adding staff to meet the increased demand.
Thus, a need in the art exists for improved processes for timely recognizing changes in staffing requirements with respect to a workforce schedule and timely fulfilling these changes in staffing requirements so that the workforce schedule is still effective. In addition, a need in the art exists for implementing such processes that operate in an automated manner. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure herein is presented.